Approach
Although there is no standard model for Dealing with the Past (DwP), in recent years a number of precedents have been established through the work of special rapporteurs and experts of the United Nations on the issues of reparations, impunity, and best practices in transitional justice. In collaboration with swisspeace, the Swiss FDFA has developed a working model for DwP based on the conceptual framework of the principles against impunity, as elaborated by UN Special Rapporteurs Louis Joinet and Diane Orentlicher.
Dealing with the Past Framework
In accordance with this framework, the DwP Course promotes a holistic understanding of Dealing with the Past. This model places an emphasis on initiatives and instruments to address the needs of victims and the accountability of perpetrators, but also recognizes the contribution of these instruments and policies to a longer-term societal process of conflict transformation. Accordingly, the DwP Course stresses the development of comprehensive, inclusive, and gender-sensitive strategies for DwP, focusing on linkages between activities in the following areas:
- The right to know: The right to know involves both a right on the part of individual victims and their families to learn the truth about the injustices they suffered and a collective duty on the part of the State to learn lessons from the past, in order to prevent the recurrence of human rights violations in the future. To ensure this right, the establishment of extra-judicial commissions of inquiry (in practice, often called “truth“ commissions) is foreseen as well as measures to secure the preservation of and access to archives and other relevant information.
- The right to justice: The right to justice implies that any victim can assert his or her rights and receive a fair and effective remedy, including the expectation that the person or persons responsible will be held accountable by judicial means and that reparations will be forthcoming. The right to justice also entails obligations for the State to investigate violations, to prosecute the perpetrators and, if their guilt is established, to punish them. National, international, and so-called “hybrid” courts and tribunals have been established to exercise this right.
- The right to reparation: The right to reparation entails individual measures for victims, including relatives or dependants, in the following areas:
-Restitution, i.e. seeking to restore the victim to his or her previous situation;
-Compensation, i.e. for physical or mental injury, including lost opportunities, physical damage, defamation, and legal aid costs;
-Rehabilitation, i.e. medical care, including psychological and psychiatric treatment.
In addition to individual measures, collective forms of reparation are also foreseen which involve symbolic acts such as annual homage to the victims or public recognition by the State of its responsibility in order to discharge the duty of remembrance and help to restore victims' dignity.
- The guarantee of non-recurrence: The guarantee of non-recurrence focuses on the need to disband paramilitary groups, to repeal emergency laws, and to remove officials from pubic office who are implicated in serious human rights violations. Measures in this regard include a process of disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration for armed groups as well as lustration and other administrative procedures for the reform of state institutions.